Here are some assorted notes regarding nutritional supplements and other health topics from sources I consider reliable. Many are from respected alternative medicine newsletters and are therefore "politically incorrect". I hope they are useful to you. These notes are definitely not approved by the FDA!
Politically Incorrect!
IMHO the Federal government and related
organizations have been feeding us bum dope on foods and supplements for all
my lifetime. Good example: Pushing a high carbohydrate diet and yet bemoaning
the fact that the population is overweight. I have for years subscribed to several
alternative medicine newsletters that are not afraid to tell the truth.
These various government agencies have been telling
us that we do not need nutritional supplements, or that they don't work, or that
they are dangerous, only to occasionally admitting that it isn't so. For example,
long before I was born some agency claimed that the farming soil in this
country had been so overworked that the mineral content was below useful
levels for growing nutritious foods. And yet it is only recently that the
medical profession has admitted that some supplementation is beneficial.
Source of this Material
Some of this information comes from The Life
Extension Foundation (LEF) located in Florida. They perform some research
on their own and report on research performed by others. Their articles are
published in a monthly magazine and in an annual book; the material is substantiated
by extensive references. They have had a running battle with the dictatorial
practices of the FDA, and they report on this subject frequently. They market
a very complete line of nutritional supplements
which are packaged for them by sources world-wide and are quality controlled in
their labs; more on this later. Their reports and product catalog are available
online at www.lef.org.
Three alternative medicine newsletters I
trust enough to recommend are:
"Real Health" by Dr William Campbell Douglass;
Agora Health, 819 N Charles St, Baltimore, MD 21201;
"Nutrition & Healing" by Dr Jonathon V. Wright; same address as above;
"Health & Wellness Update", Smart Publications, PO Box 4667, Petaluma, CA 94955;
Dale Fowkes CEO; www.smart-publications.com.
Nutritional Supplement Quality
There are an overwhelming number of supplement
suppliers in this country, and you have to know something about them to be sure
you are getting what you think you are. There are only four that I trust, and here
is why I say that:
LEF has from time to time explained how they
select their suppliers and how they control them. They first test the products
submitted for inclusion in their catalog, and they test batches as received. They
let the prospective suppliers know up front that the products will be routinely
tested for quality. Sometimes they have suppliers refuse to contract with them
as a result! In some cases, products they have tested contained less than the
stated amounts, and occasionally they have some that contain nothing at all
of the stated component! If you were to buy that product elsewhere, you would
have no assurance of what you are getting. These deficiencies can be lower amounts
of the components, lesser purity, or a different variety of the component that
may not be absorbable. By having the supplement tested regularly by LEF, you can
feel sure you are getting what you are paying for. LEF processes are controlled
and inspected by the FDA.
I buy a couple supplements from them. By
paying for an annual membership in their foundation, I get a nice discount on
the products, and at the end of each year, they have an annual sale that
gives an additional discount. In some cases they claim they are able to offer
the lowest prices anywhere on certain products. You can get the details of the
membership and their products by visiting their website.
BodyWise is a multilevel supplier and you can sign
up as a "Consultant", which authorizes you to sell their products to others and gives
you a discount. I signed up with them but never pursued it much as a business. I
remain a consumer associate. I did, however, tour
their factory which is located nearby in Tustin, CA, and it is impressive! They, too,
are inspected by the FDA and they maintain a very nice and clean factory. They make
their own label products and they make many other commercially available products
to the seller's specifications. They showed us one multivitamin product they were
making for a one-a-day type market. The components were dissolved in a solvent and
let dry as a sheet of "plastic". That was ground up and packaged in capsules, but
they readily admitted that the likelihood of that "plastic" actually dissolving
in your body was extremely low. Their own label products are made quite differently.
I have been taking their multivitamin product for several years and I am pleased
with the quality and their means of delivering it regularly each month. Far from
being a one a day thing, each day's suggested usage is six tablets.
The Vitamin Shoppe was a mail order supplier
that I bought from occasionally some years ago, and gradually drifted away from
for various reasons. Recently they opened a retail store nearby in Orange, CA
and I find it convenient to deal with them there. They offer a "discount" from
the "list price" all the time. They sell their own brand and many other name brands.
I tried one of their brand joint supplements and it works better than others
I have tried, so I get that regularly, plus a couple others.
They have a website at www.VitaminShoppe.com.
They also offer a no-charge Frequent Buyer club that allows you to build points toward
free products.
Health Freedom Nutrition is a CA company adjunct
to Smart Publications. This publication started out under another name some years ago
and became somewhat famous for a couple books that evaluated mind enhancing programs
and supplements. They make strong claims for the freshness and purity of their
products, and they are members in good standing of the local BBB. I am trying one of
their oral chelation products, but have no easy means of rating it quickly.
Their free monthly publication is good reading. They have a website at
www.hfn-usa.com.
I have tried products from other suppliers from
time to time and had no obvious benefits from them, so I dropped them. I was taking a
product from another supplier a while back but their customer service was so poor
that I started using a competing product and never went back to them.
Multivitamins
If you plan to take any supplement for any
reason, you should start with a quality multivitamin as a basis. I have no qualms
about the BodyWise product, and the comparable LEF product may be even better.
Beyond that, you can find specific products for many conditions. If you think they
will benefit you, try them, but give them a fair shot of at least four months
before deciding that they are working or not. Sometimes you can confirm that by
stopping them to see what happens.
Cholesterol
The reading I do says that it is at best a
secondary indicator of arterial condition. As Dr Douglass (Real Health) says, eat
your colesterol; your body needs it to make essential amino acids; it just doesn't
need it in your arteries. The actual arterial clogging is by calcium deposits,
with some help from cholesterol that is trying to protect you. The real (politically
incorrect) question is why are your arteries being damaged so that the body is
trying to protect them?
So maybe you should consider chelation to
clear the calcium out of your arteries. This does not answer the question of
why you have the damaged arteries, but it goes directly to the solution of
removing the calcium deposits, without dangerous surgery. Unfortunately, intravenous
chelation is a mite expensive, although fairly fast, but oral chelation is a slower
acting means to the end and is much less expensive.
Only one problem with chelation: few
conventional medical authorities want to admit that it works, mainly because it
would reduce their exhorbitant income from treating the symptoms of arterial
calcification. Such as bypass surgery. As a result, the FDA pans it mercilessly,
even though they approve it for eliminating lead from the
body. Recent statistical research indicates what some doctors have said for a
long time: bypass surgery does not solve the problem. It may relieve the
immediate symptoms, but they will just crop up somewhere else in
the body. Further, some research points out that it seldom prolongs the life
of patients any significant amount.
Trans Fats
Trans fats are an unnatural compound that
is generated by certain processes, usually hydrogenation or heating. The natural
fat is changed to a nonfunctional trans fat. An excellent example is
the usual margarine product. As trans fats increase in the diet, LDL cholesterol
is raised and HDL (good) cholesterol is reduced. This also effects the progression
of diabetes. In this country we have been
eating these trans fats for a long time, but a Harvard University study a couple
years ago determined that these are dangerous to humans. Their conclusion was
that they are the cause of about 30,000 deaths per year! There was talk of a
new type of margerine coming on the market that contains less trans fats, but I
haven't heard any more about it. After reading about this situation, we switched
to butter. Yes, there is fat in butter, but the body needs some fat intake much
more than it needs trans fats!
A related matter comes up in research that shows
our typical diet contains too much Omega 6 fatty acids and too little Omega 3 fatty
acids. You can get Omega 3 supplements just about anywhere and they are inexpensive.
Aspertame
Most of the following comes from Dr Douglass
(Real Health). This is the artificial sweetener commonly used
today. It goes by that name and brand names: NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, and
Equal-Measure. This sweetener was approved by
the FDA some years ago, and it has garnered the most formal complaints of any item
approved by the FDA, and yet the FDA does not seem concerned about its safety.
The approval process was highly irregular. First off, the manufacturer was accused
of submitting fraudulent data to the FDA, yet several studies of possible harmful
effects have been cut off. The medical staff at the FDA recommended against
approval but the then director overruled them and approved it. He then resigned
and went to work for the public relations company representing the manufacturer
(Monsanto)!
Aspertame is composed of three chemicals: two
amino acids and methanol (wood alcohol!). It decomposes in the body (and sometimes
in the can) to formaldehyde and DKP, a carcinogen. Various independent researchers
have found that many chronic illnesses can be triggered or worsened by it. Clearly
Aspertame is a dangerous substance that should be avoided at all cost. It is an
insidious poison that may or may not have an immediate impact on your health, but in
the long run is almost certain to have serious consequences.
Some details: The components of Aspertame are
acceptable to the human body in small amounts, when combined with other
factors, but in larger quantities and by themselves, they are dangerous. Methanol
is contained in some fruits but combined with ethanol which neutralizes it.
When ingested by itself (as in Aspertame) it is converted by the liver to
formaldehyde; this is considered a cumulative poison in that the body eliminates it very
slowly. The EPA considers 7.8 mg of methanol to be the max limit of daily consumption
but one 12-oz diet soft drink contains 2-1/2 times that allowable limit! Symptoms of
methanol poisoning include headache, tinnitus (ringing in the ears), vertigo, nausea, and
memory lapse; the most prominent symptoms are related to eyesight: blurred
vision, progressive reduction of the field of vision, and overt blindness.
The critical breakdown temperature of Aspertame
is 86 degrees F, at which temperature it decomposes into formaldehyde and DKP.
Despite this known temperature sensitivity, the FDA approved it for use in foods
to be heated over that temperature! Because of this temperature sensitivity, it can
decompose in the can if stored in a hot warehouse. I have read elsewhere that storage
of these diet drinks at room temperature for more than three months results in loss
of much of the sweetness; this may be related. The troops of Desert Storm
were "treated" to large amounts of diet soft drinks, which were heated to over the
critical temperature in the desert heat. Many of them returned home with numerous
disorders with symptoms similar to formaldehyde poisoning.
The chemical DKP (diketopiperazine) is another
byproduct of Aspertame breakdown. DKP has been implicated in the occurrence of brain
tumors and other chronic problems. Several studies have shown that Aspertame leads
to diabetes, that it inhibits control of diabetes by insulin, and that it aggravates
several diabetic complications. Yet the American Diabetes Association recommends that
diabetics use it! This might be because NutraSweet has donated large sums of money to
the ADA, including money to run a cooking school in Chicago; also the ADA states that
NutraSweet writes their "fact sheets".
A well-planned double blind study of the effect of
Aspertame on persons with emotional problems was undertaken a few years ago. Since the
study was not under control of the NutraSweet Company, they refused to supply the
product; the researchers had to buy it from other sources and certify it. The initial
results of the study were so damaging that the researchers cancelled the study
because of the dangers to the subjects. That study and others have shown a marked
altering of brain chemistry leading to depression and other serious behavorial
changes; this has been known since 1969. Many airline pilots have suffered acute
reactions to Aspertame in the cockpit! Altitude amplifies the symptoms. At last
count, over 600 pilots have reported symptoms, including some who have had
grand mal seizures in the cockpit.
There are a couple alternatives to Aspertame; one
that I know of is Stevia. It is a powdered leaf that has been used as a sweetener for
hundreds of years without ill effects. It is widely used in Japan and other places.
Yet the FDA banned importation of it in products in 1991. Looks like they are still
protecting their friends who manufacture Aspertame! You see mention on labels of
high fructose sweeteners; I hear they have their problems, too, but I don't
know the details. I know one soft drink manufacturer (Diet Cola) has switched to this
from Aspertame and I think that is a step in the right direction.